CUP: Full Fields Not Certain For 2012

Sprint Cup

CUP: Full Fields Not Certain For 2012

The Sprint Cup Series will be perilously close to not filling its 43-car field at times in 2012...

Bob Pockrass | http://www.scenedaily.com | Posted March 02, 2012 Charlotte, NC

The green flag waves on last year's Daytona 500. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

Over the course of one week in January, four car owners who had never entered a Sprint Cup race announced they would go Cup racing at various times in 2012.

But they aren’t taking the leap into the sport’s elite because they found a sponsor willing to spend tens of millions of dollars.

They are attracted to the sport’s top level for one reason: opportunity.

While the 2011 season produced an incredible Chase, a solid rise in television ratings and slight bump in attendance, it didn’t bring a noticeable increase in sponsors.

In fact, several big-time sponsors reduced their involvement — Crown Royal, UPS, Red Bull, General Mills and Aflac among them — resulting in four top-25 teams that didn’t return for 2012.

Richard Childress Racing and Roush Fenway Racing cut one car from their four-team stables and Red Bull Racing closed its entire two-team shop. TRG Motorsports, a team scraping by the last three years, also didn’t return.

Only one major team added an entry: Michael Waltrip Racing went from two cars to three after landing sponsorship from 5-hour Energy.

While 41 teams intend to attempt to qualify for every race in 2012, the same number as last year, only 33 appear to have enough funding to make it to the track every week or run the complete distance in each race. The rest most likely will have to skip races if funding is not acquired and start and park in select events.

That will put the Sprint Cup Series perilously close to not filling its 43-car field at times in 2012. The Daytona 500 attracted 49 cars and that shrunk to 44 for the second race of the season at Phoenix.

Of course, because teams don’t have to commit to running every race, it is possible that the field will fill out with those hoping to pocket a few extra dollars.

But it’s also possible that the high costs of even attempting a race — former Whitney Motorsports crew chief Tony Furr estimates it cost him $46,000 to start and park a race and $160,000 to run a full event — could result in teams opting to stay home.

The last time 43 cars didn’t start a Cup race was in the 2001 season finale. But that race should have an asterisk next to it in the record books. The fall New Hampshire race was rescheduled to Thanksgiving weekend after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. And only 42 cars raced because one of the teams that had originally made the field failed to show.

Since then, the last 360 Cup races have had full fields. Last year, two races had only 43 entries, while nine had 44. Most of those were earlier in the year, with more teams emerging as they saw they had a good chance to qualify for the races.

This topic is not new; teams frequently scramble to find funding prior to the start of the season.

“I know we’ve had years where we’ve gone down there and had 50 cars, but I can remember in 1995 or something like that, somebody coming to me saying, ‘Is there a concern about 30-something cars out here and some of them are unsponsored?’” says four-time Cup champion Jeff Gordon.

“It’s just something that is going to exist in our sport forever because there is a cost involved.”

NASCAR officials often roll their eyes when faced with questions about full fields. The Nationwide Series fell short of its 43-car full field in six of its 34 events last year and the Truck Series fell short of its 36-truck field in eight of 25 events.

The world didn’t end and there was no outcry from fans about too few competitors on the track. But if the premier series doesn’t start 43 cars, the sport could receive a black eye in public perception. It might be interpreted as another sign that the sport has lost the mojo it enjoyed in the last decade.

“A lot of people will use that as a determination factor on success or not being [a] success,” NASCAR President Mike Helton says. “We could sit here and argue that that doesn’t necessarily contribute to that, but it is the benchmark that we go by.”

NASCAR and network executives swear that NASCAR is not required to have 43 cars competing in an event to fulfill its television obligations.

So a smaller field might not mean a thing to the sport or even its competitors. But there is one sure drawback: fewer opportunities for young drivers, and that’s where fans will see the difference.

In the harsh economic climate, even veteran drivers such as Brian Vickers were looking for a ride heading into the season opener. And there has not been a rookie with an established Cup team in the last three seasons.

The last three Nationwide rookies of the year — Timmy Hill, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Justin Allgaier — are still running in the Nationwide Series in 2012, and only one of the three top rookies in the series before them — David Ragan – has a full-time Cup ride.

The last two Cup rookies of the year — Andy Lally and Kevin Conway — don’t have rides.

Why is that? In part because no sponsor wants to pay to develop a young talent. Kyle Busch has basically pleaded with sponsors to put money into development drivers at Kyle Busch Motorsports, but he said the companies just wanted him or another veteran to drive.

When a sponsor invests millions of dollars, it wants results on the track and a spokesperson fans already know. Rookies have trouble fulfilling those needs, and even those who have had success — such as 2011 Nationwide Series champion Stenhouse — have trouble finding funding.

“I don’t have to run in the Truck Series for me to get the notoriety to win races, for all that,” Busch said last year when discussing the inability to find sponsorship for development drivers.

“That’s not why I do it. I do it to keep the doors open. … You need to have a sponsor that is going to stand behind that driver and try to build that product. Unfortunately, we haven’t had any of those discussions.”

That puts drivers such as Michael McDowell and Lally in cars where they can prove their determination but not necessarily their skill.

The most start-and-park teams in one race last year was eight, and there could be that many or more in some races in 2012.

While it might cost $160,000 just to put a car on the track for an entire race, it costs much more to run competitively.

Sponsorship costs vary widely by team but, for example, the U.S. Army was paying $7.4 million for 15 races as Ryan Newman’s sponsor at Stewart-Haas Racing. That’s $493,333 a race for a driver who wins occasionally but often makes the Chase. The Army spends an additional $8 million in motorsports marketing, which covers both NASCAR and NHRA.

At those prices, it often takes more than one sponsor to fill out a car, which means it takes twice as many sponsors as it did several years ago to fill 43 cars. Just three years ago, 26 cars had sponsors that filled at least two-thirds of the season on a car.

Now it’s down to eight.

“Racing is a big business now,” Gordon says. “That’s the thing that I think has changed in the last 20 years. Twenty years ago, there might have been some guys come in wanting to do it as a hobby, getting a little bit of sponsorship to offset the costs.

“Nowadays, if you’re going to compete at all at any kind of a high level, it’s no longer a hobby.”

Also, race teams are less likely to field the maximum four cars just for the sake of having four cars on the track.

“Our goal as an organization is to win races, not necessarily to be a certain size,” says Roush Fenway Racing President Steve Newmark as his organization drops from four full-time teams to three this season. “We had success at being that size, but we’re not going to try to achieve a certain mass just for the sake that we’re able to say we’re four cars.”

Richard Childress has no interest in putting together a program with several sponsors and several drivers to field another car for the whole season.

“You can’t be competitive like that,” Childress said. “I’d rather have three teams that you can be competitive with and occasionally pick up a race or two along the way that if you have something you want to try, you do it.”

Roush Fenway is trying to do that with Daytona 500 winner Matt Kenseth. His team still has more than half the season available on his No. 17 Ford (he’ll run all the races, regardless of sponsorship). Kasey Kahne, Robby Gordon, Trevor Bayne, Kurt Busch, Aric Almirola and Newman also have unsold inventory.

How will the dearth of sponsor dollars get resolved?

NASCAR and track officials hope that the economy gets better.

“I’ve seen times that we didn’t have full fields in the sport, and you always would prefer to have 43 because that’s the magic number,” Talladega Superspeedway Chairman Grant Lynch says. “But the races we’ve had less in the past have been attended fairly well. And I think as the economy improves and more companies start letting loose of the money they’re holding back right now, I think you’ll see sponsorships pick back up.”

Helton believes every race this year will have 43 cars for the 11th consecutive season.

“We’ve been through cycles — particularly when we get to the June-July stretch, where we may only have 43 cars show up at the race track,” Helton said. “But I don’t see us going below 43 this year. I may be surprised.”

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